A/N: Time to add an update across the board on these fics rather than simply focusing on just one ... this is good .. gives me time to properly consider where I'm headed next on each and every one.
I know this fic isn't popular, but if you're reading, I hope you like this chapter!
Which fic do I update next?
~~oooOOOooo~~
Rose Tyler's eyes were devoid of any real emotion that didn't include absolute and utter indignation as she stared at the wall straight ahead of her and sighed heavily. It was a sigh more weary than indignant, and it seemed to please the man standing in front of her. He gave her a leering stare and matching grin as kicked impatiently at the man crouched ahead of him.
"Set the musket at her breast," he ordered in a voice more slimy than even the sleaziest man she'd ever encountered in any seedy London bar. "Between her knees and up against bosom – let it be the very last thing to ever venture there."
Rose's eyes flicked angrily to one side to offer him a look of utter disgust, but she said nothing. She continued to remain silent as he slowly lowered into a crouch in front of her and took her chin in his large, weathered hand.
"Or should we part the knees and let each man take his fill, first," he snarled as his fingers dug deep into the hollows of her cheeks. "Let your last memories of this life be the contorted face of a man violating and taking his prize."
Rose's lip curled with disgust. She wasn't going to betray her carefully crafted calm exterior by showing any of the fear she felt at his words. She made sure that her voice was laden with utter repulsion as she breathed out a single word in reply: "pig."
Behind her a red-coat wearing man roughly tugged and tied her hands against a bed-post behind her. He growled hotly against her ear in words and syllables that spoke of his hatred toward her, no doubt with the intent to intimidate her into keeping still and quiet for him. She tried her best to ignore the slurred litany against her hair and kept her eyes on the monster of a man looming over her.
"Oh do settle yourself," he warned his accomplice at Rose's back. "Filthy Off Worlders like this one don't deserve your precious time nor your words."
Rose smirked. "The Filthy Off Worlder is right here, ta." Her eyes fell to a half-lidded stare of contempt. "And obviously, I'm worth a lot of both your time and your words, if the last half hour's been any indication."
Anything further she had to say on the matter degenerated into a low hiss of suppressed pain as a flattened hand blazed across her cheek in a furious blow.
"You will shut your mouth," he demanded with voice thunderous with fury as he roughly cupped her chin in his hand and squeezed her cheeks painfully with his thumb and fingers. He forced her chin upward and moved his head closer to exaggerate his appraisal of her face. "Large though it is," he sneered. "I imagine that all it wants to do is flap about nonsense in the breeze."
Rose glared angrily down along her nose at him, but said nothing further. She didn't even offer him any kind of readable expression. Fortunately, the fear she felt within, and the energy it required to suppress any sign of her terror enabled her adequately remain without any form of expressive façade at all.
After a long moment her aggressor released her chin, but not before he squeezed at the hollows of her cheeks hard enough for her teeth to cut into the soft skin of her cheeks. She tasted the metallic tang of iron against her tongue and shuddered.
…It was a noticeable shudder that made her attackers laugh triumphantly.
"Terrified, aren't you?" He bellowed out amongst the huffs of laughter. When chose to merely glare at him from around the muzzle of the musket instead of snap back an answer, his laughter died. His voice took on a far more menacing tone. "Feel free to cry, my dear," he murmered with faux tenderness in his voice. "We can't look much further below toward you than we do now."
Rose muttered something inaudible and continued to glare at him.
Her attacker stood tall and loomed over her. He set his fists on his hips and puffed out his chest to look down along the buttons of his tunic at her. "What did you say?"
Rose murmured quietly again, but said nothing he could hear.
"I said speak!" he bellowed with a stomp of his foot on the tiled floor beneath his boots. "I'm not opposed to …"
"I said," Rose interrupted as she slowly lifted her chin with forced defiance. "You've made a mistake. I very big one."
He snorted derisively at her. "Oh," he managed with amusement staining his tone. "I think you'll find that any mistakes made were all made by you and your friend."
"That's where you're wrong," she corrected coolly and without emotion. "You see. My friend: the Doctor. He's not as playful a little puppy as you think he is."
Her attacker sniffed and rolled his eyes. "Oh," he began with a long suffering sigh. "How many times must I be given a warning like this from you pathetic mates of even more pathetic excuses for men?"
Rose let a brow flick upward into a perfectly manicured arch. There was a smile on her bloody lip. "Just how many times have you found yourself threatening the friend of a Time Lord, then?" As his brows lifted with recognition to the Doctor's species her tongue slowly shifted to lick the blood on her upper lip in some sort of morbid victory. "You do know that he's a Time Lord, yeah?"
"I didn't," her captor breathed back slowly in reply. "A Time Lord, you say? As in from Gallifrey?"
His voice was quiet and held what Rose assumed was a sliver of fear. It made her smile a very dangerous smirk, and she lowered the register of her own voice in response. "I see you've heard of it."
"Gallifrey's dead," he corrected darkly. "Destroyed in the War they created."
She hummed before answering with a smile. "And you think that there wasn't a single survivor?" Her grin thinned out so that she could chuckle. "They're a planet of time travellers, there could be any number of them still swannin' about 'round the universe."
Rose let out a yelp as a hand forcibly shoved the musket aside and slammed against her bosom. Sharp and gnarled fingertips searched through the bunched cotton fabric of her bodice to find purchase against her skin and then held hard. Her captive ignored her vocal protests and the violent squirming and let himself concentrate on the feeling beneath his flattened palm. He murmured something that Rose couldn't quite catch, then growled and snatched his hand away as though burned.
Rose narrowed her glare at him and let her mind's eye tear him limb from limb; ruing that her hands were tied together in front of her leaving her unable to do it in reality.
"Touch me like that again, arsehole, and you'll be sorry."
His eyes flashed madly toward her. He grunted as he set the barrel of the musket between her breasts. His eyes didn't lift to hers, but the rising ghost of his breath carried a pair of words upward into her face.
"One heart."
Rose snorted. "Yeah? What about it?"
His eyes finally lifted. "Time Lords have two hearts," he growled out. "You have one. Don't think you can trick me with your lies about being a Time Lord."
"Never said I was the Time Lord," she snarled in reply. "The Doctor's the Time Lord." She smirked. "I'm Human."
He snorted in reply. "A Time Lord and a Human? Don't be so foolish. The sanctimonious idiots on Gallifrey wouldn't lower themselves to play around with a species as worthless as a Human."
"Human's aren't worthless," she snapped back in rebuttal as she renewed her attempt to struggle free of her binding. "An' you ask me, the only sanctimonious ponce around here is you – thinkin' you're all that and then some." She leaned forward as far as she could with the musket at her breast and sneered into his face. "You know what they call 'im; the Doctor? Out on Skaro where the Daleks swan about?"
His eyes lifted and his breath slowed in interest, but he said nothing.
"Oh, yeah," she whispered with a smile. "Got your attention now 'aven't I?"
She wore a smirk of victory as she leaned back again and tried to rest comfortably against the bedpost at her back. "Call 'im the Oncoming Storm, they do. Terrified of 'him. The Doctor .. my Doctor … is the only creature in this entire universe that is feared by the Daleks."
The Captor licked nervously at his lip. The thickness of his swallow was evident with the rise and fall of his adam's apple.
"Killed them all," she continued with a low voice. "Each an' every one of those killer pepper pots he did."
Her captor's voice was quiet, perhaps fearful. "And you, human, you're his mate?"
"Best mate," she clarified. "Close as anythin' he and me are." She licked at her lip and lifted her brows in challenge. "And you've got me trapped and bound here. He's not goin' to like that too much. When he finds out that he's been betrayed, he's comin' back for me."
He lifted himself to his full height to loom over her. His hands fisted tightly and he pressed them into his hips. "Right into an ambush of my finest gunmen."
His face shifted into a grin at the sudden wash of horrored realisation that crossed her features.
"The team he rode out with, Human…" He paused long enough to laugh. "Not one of them is part of the rebellion against our King."
Her voice was meek, despite her efforts to make herself appear to be brave and unaffected. "how can you be so sure of that?"
"Quite easily," he said with a laugh. "Because they're the same group of men that ride out with all the infidels who think they can come to our planet and try to take over."
Rose gasped and shook her head. "But that's not what he's tryin' to do. He was asked to help, and that's what we're doin'!" She renewed her struggle. "Please! You can't do this to him. The Doctor doesn't mean anyone harm. He helps people, that's what he does…"
"Sticks his nose in where it doesn't belong, you mean," he clarified with a growl. "And all busybodies have to be taught to keep their noses out of everyone else's business."
"So that's what this is about, then?" she blustered out with panic. "This is all about teachin' him a lesson?"
He smiled and gave a single sharp nod of his head. "Yes."
"By killin' him?"
"Best way to pass on the lesson, don't you think?"
She shook her head and struggled new. "It's pointless! How's he goin' to learn any lesson if he's dead?"
Her captor merely shrugged. "Who said the lesson's for him, Human?" He thrust a finger toward the window in a gesture toward the people outside. "The lesson's for them: Not to defy the laws of our king!"
He dropped into a crouch before her and roughly cupped her chin in his hand. "Word spreads fast throughout the cosmos, don't you know. This serves as a warning to all of them. A warning to anyone out there wanting to come to our planet and try to take control from our lord and King."
Tears filled her eyes and she tried to shake her head although it was held firm by her captor. Her worried voice broke. "You can't. This isn't right."
"It is right," he corrected softly, almost tenderly. The tenderness fled quickly, however, and was replaced with a triumphant sneer. "And if we can take down a Lord of Time, the last of the Gallifreyans and the man who terrifies even the Daleks themselves …" He gave her a soft and throaty chuckle. "Then no one will dare come down with a challenge."
"Kill me instead," she pleaded.
His eyes flashed wide and his brows lifted high. "Pardon me?"
"You heard me," she begged through her tears. "You want to punish 'im? Fine then punish him. You don't have to kill him."
"Oh," he answered with a condescending breath. "But I think I do."
She shook her head and struggled harder. "Kill me. That'll teach him whatever lesson you want. Just please … please … don't hurt him."
He offered her a very condescending expression and stroked at her wetted cheeks. "Oh my dear," he breathed out softly. "While I know the torture that killing a mate of a Time Lord will bring him…"
"Better than death, yeah?" she ventured eagerly. She knew that the Doctor would survive her death, that he'd move on as he always had. Oh, he'd grieve her loss – she had no doubt about that – but he'd survive and – hopefully – use her death and her name inside his hearts to keep fighting.
"Much better than killin' him," she pleaded again.
He swept his finger through her tears and then lifted it to his tongue to taste the saltiness of her agony. "Such a valiant young thing, aren't you?" He chuckled and shrugged a shoulder. "Well. No. Not really. You've been very easy to break."
Her voice fell to a whisper that was barely audible. "Please don't do this. He's a good man, the Doctor. He doesn't deserve this."
"Oh," he sang with a smile. "Of course he does. You all do."
"There are worse punishments than death…"
"No," he corrected her with a pet at her cheek. "There really aren't." He leaned down lose to her ear and shifted the musket at her breast. "But I'll tell you what?"
She inhaled a shaking, but hopeful breath. "What?"
He nuzzled his rough jaw against her cheek and spoke against her ear. "Gallifreyans are telepathic," he began softly. "Their bonds with their mates are known across the universe as the strongest connection across the entire universe."
He chuckled when he heard her gulp against his ear, and then hummed appreciatively. "You probably don't feel the connection between you as much as he does; what, with your inferior human brain unable to fully embrace that telepathic link."
He unhitched the musket from her breast and drew himself up to a stand. He watched the muzzle of the weapon as it hung at his side. "Chances are you don't even feel the link he has with you." He lifted only his eyes to hers. "But I assure you that he can. He feels everything that you feel right now: Hopelessness, fear, confusion … resignation, maybe?"
"He can't," she whispered softly. "He and me. We're only mates, that's all. All we are, and all we ever will be."
"Mates," he growled with anger. "That's it precisely. You are his mate, and therefore he is very intimately and permanently bound to you." He waved his hand at her. "And don't bother trying to tell me that the two of you aren't bound. He's a Time Lord. The only way he'd spend any time with a mere Human such as yourself, and show any form of the protectiveness that you've described, is if he is bound by the holy rites of his people."
"He'd have to hang about me for a bit first, before he decided to do any bonding at all," she muttered to herself, inaudible to her captor.
"…So therefore,' he continued with a grin as he waved the musket around like a conducting baton. "If I kill you," he pointed the stick at her, "then he's going to feel not only she sheer agonising pain that you experience at the muzzle of my musket, but the obliterating pain of his telepathic connection to you as it severs and tears itself from his mind."
Rose's breath staggered in and out of her chest at the thought.
"Oh," he continued with song. "He'll beg me for death at that juncture, my dear. Beg for it." He then looked her up and down with a lifted brow and a lick at his lip. "If we had time, then perhaps I – or one of my men – could increase his agony by violating you first…"
He paused to watch her shuffle backward, harder against the pole at her back.
She chuckled and looked up at the wall toward an ornate clock beside the door. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and shook his head. "Lucky for you both, I'm on a tight schedule."
Without another word he lifted the musket and aimed the barrel toward her. His tongue brushed out to swipe across her lip and he gave her one last appreciative appraisal.
"Please don't," she pleaded on a whisper. "He does—"
Her words cut sharply with the loud crack of the musket. She couldn't even let out a cry of agony as the super-heated metal balls exploded from the muzzle of the weapon and blasted against her chest. She felt the impact of each and every one of the smaller pellets, followed by the hard impact of the single-larger ball that had been loaded with its smaller companions. She knew the moment that the larger ball pierced her heart to end her life … She felt her heart stop with the impact and counted off the seconds until her brain was starved of both blood and oxygen and ended her existence.
Her last thoughts should have been of the Doctor and of her love for him. She should have apologised for not being stronger; for being taken down and not able to get a warning to him. But it wasn't….
All she could think of was to question just why her fingertips were burning. Why did it feel as though her hands and neck were on fire. She could feeel her body being torn apart, alight with flames.
Was this what death truly felt like? Was she descending into hell, like her grandmother always warned that she would if she didn't stop with her sinful behaviours and start to live a more righteous life?
…If the scream she heard from lungs that weren't hers was anything to go by, then Hell is exactly where she was headed.
If only the Doctor could pilot the TARDIS to hell, perhaps he could save her in the same way she'd saved him….
